Lock 'em up or release on a technicality --- Justice Dept. can't decide

http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
WHY IS THE U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT twisting itself into a pretzel to avoid
enforcing the law? The law in question has nothing to do with campaign
finances, and the case involves no allegations against anyone in this
administration, so partisan politics doesn't explain the Justice
Department's position.

At issue is a 31-year-old statute passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress
and signed into law by a Democrat president. The law, 18 U.S.C. 3501 -- or
3501, for short -- permits prosecutors to use defendants' voluntary
confessions in federal prosecutions. The current controversy concerns the
law's application in a criminal case involving a voluntary confession by a
serial bank robber.

The defendant in the case, Charles Dickerson, admitted committing several
bank robberies in Maryland and Virginia, and was prosecuted by the U.S.
attorney's office for the eastern district of Virginia. The lower court,
however, ruled that Dickerson's voluntary confession could not be admitted
as evidence against him, because he made it before being fully read his
rights by federal law-enforcement officers.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, however, overturned the District Court's
ruling, on the basis that the defendant's confession was completely
voluntary -- and therefore, constitutionally permissible. You would think
the Justice Department would be overjoyed that its lawyers could now use
Dickerson's confession and win a conviction that would put an armed bank
robber in jail. Think again.

The Justice Department can't make up its mind whether its job is to put
dangerous criminals behind bars or to set them free on a technicality. So,
last week, the department asked for more time to respond to a petition by
defendant Dickerson to the U.S. Supreme Court. Dickerson's lawyers argue
that the 4th Circuit decision is inconsistent with the 1966 Supreme Court
ruling in Miranda v. Arizona and that Congress had no right to enact a law
that, they claim, attempted to 'overturn' Miranda. The Justice Department
has made it clear it agrees with Dickerson -- a position that jeopardizes
several pending federal prosecutions.

The Miranda decision has become so familiar, virtually every school child
can recite the so-called Miranda warning: "You have the right to remain
silent. If you choose not to remain silent, anything you say can and will be
used against you in court. You have a right to consult with a lawyer before
you are questioned, and may have one with you during questioning. If you
cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you, free of charge, and
so on."

Far less well-known are the Supreme Court's own rulings in Miranda, and
subsequently, that such warnings are "not themselves rights protected by the
Constitution, but instead measures to insure that the (suspect's) right
against compulsory self-incrimination (is) protected." The Constitution
forbids coerced confessions, but it does not require that a person accused
of a crime be read a specific warning in prescribed language -- television
police dramas notwithstanding -- before he can confess to the crime.

But the Clinton Justice Department is clearly uncomfortable with this
interpretation of the Court's rulings, and more specifically, with the
so-called 3501 provisions of the U.S. criminal code, which provides "a
confession ... shall be admissible in evidence in federal prosecutions if it
is voluntarily given." Now, the Justice Department must decide whether to
argue that 3501 itself is unconstitutional, which could present major
political problems for an administration that claims to be tough on crime.

The case has already resulted in one significant casualty: An 18-year
veteran Justice Department career lawyer resigned earlier this year in
protest over the department's failure to invoke 3501 in arguments to the 4th
Circuit in the Dickerson case. Indeed, an outside group, the Washington
Legal Foundation, was left to make the winning argument to the Appeals Court
that Dickerson's confession was admissible because of the law.

In the Dickerson case, the Justice Department is behaving more like the
criminals' lawyers than the people's chief
prosecutor.